‘Children’s Book Project’ was introduced in Fall 2023 in heritage Hindi class i.e. course designed for students with basic conversational Hindi. The aim of this activity was to build a strong sense of belonging, community building among the students in the class, appreciation for their culture and families. This project helped the class to become a stronger cohort and students seemed to value pair/ group work in the class. This project was introduced to instill an appreciation in students for their identity and for the students to learn more about growing-up experiences in South-Asian households from each other.
We began with reading a children’s book together as a class which led the class into discussions on food, music, games, friends, siblings and family from childhood, it even got the students talking about sharing how some wanted to be cleaners or a roadside snack seller. This took the students back to their childhood and everyone was eager to share their stories from their growing-up time. Sharing experiences built solidarity and enhanced student engagement.
The project is thoughtfully structured and scaffolded to ensure students feel comfortable and confident throughout the process. After an initial discussion, we skimmed through a few Hindi children’s books as per their interests, such as action, comic, science fiction, animal, moral stories, etc. to examine which aspects of children books the students appreciated and what aspects to improve. It was then the students pointed how the books don't reflect the realities of the present day- no queer representation, lack of linguistic variety, use of skin color to represent different social class, strengthening gender stereotypes, etc. The high motivation and enthusiasm at this point was an indication to student engagement and interest in the book writing project.
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